The Land of the Blind
by Candle Beck
Summary: Slash, Sam/Dean. One of several possible futures, complicated by a different kind of amnesia.


The Land of the Blind

By Candle Beck

The ocean never moves anymore.

Sam is sitting in the blue chair, paint peeling from the salt in the air, book pages going soft in his hands. He's about ten feet from the place where the ocean starts, and the line doesn't move, no surf, no rocking white-tipped waves. No tide.

It's unbelievably quiet. Sam sighs just to hear the rushing sound of it, listens to his heart's steady thump. He's tired today, having trouble concentrating on his book (some lesser Heinlein that Dean got for him, another space alien book taking place on a different planet), and he keeps dozing, nodding off. His leg hurts, deep and slow.

"Sammy!"

That's Dean, coming out of the house and calling to him absently, just to let Sam know he's coming. Sam kinda remembers Dean catching him off-guard a little while ago, laying a hand on Sam's shoulder without warning and maybe Sam had whirled, punched him in the face hard enough that his teeth tore into the inside of his cheek. Sam remembers being on his knees next to Dean as Dean spat huge mouthfuls of blood onto the dirt, pawing at Dean's shoulders for forgiveness and Dean only shaking his head, mumbling and choking out, "My fault, my fault, shouldn't've scared you, fuck," and since then Dean has made a point of not sneaking up on Sam anymore.

Sam frowns out at the ocean, pain creeping up his leg and settling in the stony edge of his hip, the small of his back. His mind shoves that stuff aside, his eyes smoothing over the twilight colors of the motionless sea.

Dean comes up whistling, making all kinds of noise. Sam forgets that there was ever such a thing as quiet, ears filling up with his brother.

"What're you doing, man, you napping out here?" Dean asks.

Sam shrugs. Maybe he was a little, but not just now. It's hard to know how to answer his brother.

"You got a bed for that kinda thing, I'm just sayin'." Dean isn't looking at Sam, eyes thin and trained on the ocean, something frightful and awed tightening his expression. Dean doesn't like looking at the sea the way Sam does. It doesn't calm him in the same way.

"Anyway, I'm going into town," Dean tells him. He's got a hand gripping the back of the chair and Sam would rather Dean's hand were gripping his shoulder, but he knows that's not the right thing to think. "Get some food, an' I'll look around for some more books, okay? Almost done with that one already, huh? You're reading them at, like, nerd warp speed. It'd be kinda impressive if it wasn't so lame. But look who I'm talking to, as if you've ever been cool."

Dean's just talking. Dean does that a lot these days, just talks. Fills up the space.

Sam doesn't mind.

"All right, so you'll go inside when it gets cold, yeah?" Dean's hand flicks at Sam's head, brushes without intent through his hair.

Sam nods. His hands are buried under his arms because he thinks it's already cold, but he doesn't say anything. Sam hasn't said much for a really long time.

"All right," Dean says again, his voice fading as he moves away.

The sand is a grayish brown color, powder-dry and dull-looking. The sunlight is always banked and diffuse, shrouded in heavy gray clouds. There is something wrong with this place, the beach colored like shadow and the ocean never moving, but Sam can't say what.

From far away, Sam hears the roar of the Impala starting. He makes a little growling engine noise in the back of his throat, closing his eyes and trying to imagine the feel of the steering wheel beneath his hands.

(break)

Sam remembers to come inside. He used to fall asleep out in the blue chair out there on the beach, but then Dean would shake him awake with a terrified look on his face and Sam didn't like seeing that, not at all.

So he comes inside, and he has a few packs of Oreo cookies so stale the cream is dust-like and the cookies almost tasteless. The sweetness makes his back tooth ache, but it's still very good, tastes like the stuff that Sam can't remember.

Sam knows there's a lot of stuff he can't remember.

But there's no point thinking about it. Dean told him that, said, "If you can't remember, just don't try," and there's some kind of perfect logic to that, or anyway that's how it seems to Sam. He believes almost everything that Dean tells him, because Dean's his brother and Sam never once forgot that.

He reads his space alien book until the low light from the camp lantern makes his eyes start to burn. Dean is still not back, but Sam's not worried. Sam does his best not to worry about stuff these days. He has a cold can of beans for dinner even though Dean said it was okay for him to light the stove if he needed to, but sometimes Sam likes them cold, anyway.

The winds pick up outside. Every night it's like that, hurricane-strength even though Dean says they're in California and it's earthquakes not rain out here. Dean says the winds are worse now, but worse than what, Sam doesn't know. Dean says it must have something to do with the moon, and Sam's not a hundred percent sure what he's talking about.

Sam crawls into bed early, feeling chilled and wearied. The skin on his face feels too taut, pulled sharply over his features, and he drags the blankets over his head, burrowed down. He's not going to sleep much, but he likes it when it's all the way dark, pinned against the last shreds of light. Disjointed thoughts drift back and forth in his mind, halfhearted fugues playing out neon scenes behind his eyes.

Then the Impala is vrooming in the driveway, two quick spurs before the engine shuts off that Sam recognizes as Dean's code. His eyes snap open under the covers, but he doesn't move.

Dean comes banging in, their little four-room house rattling with the slammed door, and he calls Sam's name, stops short in the doorway of his bedroom.

"Are you asleep?" Dean asks, voice suddenly hushed.

Sam kicks a little with his feet to show that he's not, hears the floor creak as Dean comes over to him.

"Are you okay? Can I see you?"

Dean's tugging at the blankets, and Sam lets him pull them away, fresh air searing in his lungs, eyes screwed down against the light. He blinks up at Dean and feels like a small child even though he only remembers dream-fragments from his childhood. Dean looks roughed up, his hands dirty and twitching like he wants to reach for Sam but won't allow it.

"Did you eat?"

Sam nods, curls his hands in the covers. The wind battering their rickety house suddenly sounds very far away.

"I got you a book. And candy, there was some candy this time. Jolly Ranchers never go bad."

Dean falls quiet, just kinda stares at Sam and Sam lets him because it feels totally natural, having Dean stare at him. Sam stares back because it's not like he has a lot of options. Dean's face is the only one Sam has ever recognized. That seems like how it should be.

"You gonna sleep, Sammy?" Dean asks, all quiet as if there's someone else around to hear.

Sam shrugs, shakes his head. Sleeping is hazardous, nightmares like bolts of lightning striking down out of clear blue skies, the second he shuts his eyes it's all sinew and blood and melting flesh, little kids ripped apart shrieking, and he doesn't have the voice to scream for it all. He's tried, found himself coughing blood in the morning, Dean crouched next to him on the bedroom floor running panicked hands up and down Sam's back. There are worse things than not sleeping.

"Well, I gotta," Dean says, and sits on the edge of the bed to yank his boots off. He collapses back fully-clothed on top of the covers and Sam gives him a suspicious look, head-butts his arm. Dean grunts, turns his face away. "Shut up, 'm tired."

Sam lies back down, ramming Dean a few times with his shoulder as he gets settled. It's been a couple weeks since Dean slept in Sam's bed, and that was just because Sam once tried to claw out his own eyes while asleep--that was before Sam taught himself how to wake up as soon as he drifted deeply enough to dream. Sam wouldn't really call it comfortable, having Dean in bed beside him again, too close and making him too hot, but Dean must have his reasons.

(break)

They eat together, sitting across a wooden table, and it's the only part of Sam's day that feels completely like it should. Dean gets deeply involved with his food and flashes grins, mumbles, "'s good, huh?" even though everything is either dried goods or from cans. His feet are between Sam's under the table, their ankles knocking together occasionally.

The cloud cover has finally burned off. Months it's been, though Sam doesn't have much sense of how quickly time is passing, but every day they've spent out here on the coast the sky has been heavily layered with dense gray pressing down and matching the color of the water perfectly at dusk. Sam thought that was just what the sky looked like now, stilled and unchanging same as the ocean. He knows these things aren't right but a lot of stuff isn't right.

But today the sun is out. It's streaming relentlessly through the back windows, flooding crazy warmth under Sam's skin. It makes him want to move.

He drinks his coffee and tunes back in to Dean's ever-present monologue, something about how the fields can use some goddamn sunlight, and Sam just kinda watches him for awhile. Dean is animated, laying out arguments like someone's actually debating with him, and his face is lit up in a way that it's not usually, what with the overcast and camp lanterns and flashlights and all the other dimmed ways of this world.

But it's bright enough now that Sam can make out the scar bisecting Dean's right eyelid, and how it droops a little even when his eyes are wide and imploring. Dean instinctively keeps his face tilted away, but Sam can still see the edge of the mass of gnarled tissue when Dean's right ear used to be. He stares, waits for Dean's ramble to trail off in uncertain fragments.

"What?" Dean half-grins, scratches at his chin. "I got something on my face, or what?"

Sam shakes his head. He keeps looking at Dean, narrowed-eyed.

"You need something, Sammy?" Dean asks, exasperated and leaning towards Sam. Sam nods, flinches back.

"Take me with you," Sam says carefully.

He sounds totally normal, or as well as he knows, anyway. Dean looks stunned for a second but he recovers efficiently. He's known that Sam hasn't been quiet because he _can't_--Sam still screams pretty goddamn well.

"Where?" Dean asks, business-like.

"Town."

"Yeah?" Little sideways glance, Dean sizing him up and Sam straightens his shoulders unconsciously. "Think you're up for that, huh?"

"Yeah."

Sam remembers how to do this. It frightens him in a weird way, saying stuff because people can hear him, they can see him better if he talks, but he doesn't think courage is one of his shortcomings, not if the stories Dean tells him are true. He doesn't think it's unusual for them to be scared.

"Well, what do you even want to do there?"

Sam shrugs. He crosses his arms over his chest, pressing his hands flat to his ribs because he feels a little better locked up like that, a little more secure. Not sure what to say and so he doesn't say anything, content in the fraught moment of silence. Dean eyes him, looks away with his mouth in a line.

"I'm just going to the store," Dean says. "Supposed to be a truck coming in from the communes up north that's got good stuff for trade."

Sam nods, lifting his chin to give Dean a look that slides onto his face without the slightest effort, big-eyed and faintly pleading and he sees how Dean's shoulders collapse on a sigh. Dean doesn't even try to fight it, immediately resigned. A small spur of nostalgia ripples through Sam, ghostly sense that they've done this nine thousand times.

Dean says that Sam will eventually be able to remember more things, like how at first he couldn't read but then it all came flooding back after an hour of Dean sounding out letters for him same as he did twenty years ago. Sam thinks that's probably true, and maybe it's already happening, but he doesn't want to worry about it just now. The sun is out.

That first time that Dean takes Sam into town with him, Sam mostly just stays in the car. The landscape changes a few minutes out from their place, the soft dirty-looking sand giving way to harder soil, a paved road that has Dean sighing with relief.

There's not much to it, this 'town' place. Just a few buildings huddled together next to the cracked asphalt of the road, a storefront with the paint on its sign eaten away, but there are surely strangers in there, people who aren't Dean. Sam needs to work his way up to it, feeling pinned in place by the heaviness of the sunlight.

A little kid comes out of the store, comes to run a grubby hand along the side of Dean's car with an expression of reverence on his face that snaps abruptly to distrust when he catches sight of Sam in the shotgun seat.

"Who're you?" the kid demands. "That's not your car!"

Sam blinks at the kid, bleach spots on his shirt and his pants too big, cuffs rolled and a belt cinched tight, wearing a hateful scowl and a brush-cut so savage his scalp gleams. Sam scowls back, eyebrows hunching down.

"Sam," he says defiantly, because he can talk, it's okay. The kid's face gets all surprised.

"Dean's brother Sam?"

Sam nods. The kid looks disappointed. "My daddy thinks you're dead on accounta Dean being crazy. But I guess you ain't."

Sam doesn't have any idea what to say to that. The kid squints at him, milk-pale under the grimed dirt on his skin. The kid says, "My daddy works on the Wall," and Sam doesn't know what that means.

But luckily Dean comes back then, spotting the kid and hollering, "Told you to leave my car alone, you little rat," and the boy yelps, vanishes around the side of the store. Dean is shaking his head, carrying a box full of canned goods and books that has the muscles in his arms strained and standing out.

"That goddamn kid, I swear," Dean mutters, opening the back to put the box in. Sam catches Dean glancing at him with concern, but Sam is busy trying to figure out if it's okay that some people don't believe he exists.

When Dean asks if he's ready to go home, Sam nods. He doesn't speak again for another week. Dean doesn't seem to mind.

(break)

The little house that Dean made for them at the end of everything is in serious danger from the wind. Sam doesn't sit near the windows after nightfall. The ring of near-breaking glass is almost subliminal, but Sam can just hear it. He hauls his blue chair in off the beach, wooden legs dragging soft trenches in the dry sand, because once he didn't and came out the next morning to find it blown two hundred feet down the coast.

The skies stay clear, overbearing sun and then a disturbing overabundance of stars after dark. Sam thinks there's something wrong about that, but he doesn't worry overly about it because there is something distantly wrong about everything.

Dean gets antsy at night, muttering under his breath and pacing the short floors. He stays away from the windows too, flinches when he catches glimpses of the sky. Sam watches his brother, never really stops.

The first thing Sam remembers for sure is Dean saying his name. Dean was calling him in a spiraling echo as if from the top of a very deep canyon at the bottom of which lay Sam. Sam surfaced from wherever he'd been before, found himself lying in a generic pile of rubble, and he knew that it was his own name being called, and he knew that it was Dean, his brother Dean calling for him, and that was all. He didn't know anything else, and then he sunk under again.

Next time he woke up he was in the back of the Impala. Dean was talking to him, frayed kinda ramble as if he were talking to a corpse, his hands beating off-rhythm on the steering wheel. Sam moaned--his leg felt crushed. Dean's voice skidded to a stop and then he was asking as the car slewed across the empty road, "Sam, are you awake Sam, are you okay?"

Sam thought about saying yes but he couldn't quite remember how. He met his brother's eyes over the back of the seat and lifted his hand, breathing in shudders through his teeth. Dean's face wrenched, something like relief and terror all balled up, and then he was saying, "It's okay, Sammy, gettin' the fuck out of here," and turning back as the car leapt forward and almost jarred Sam off the seat.

They drove for a very long time. Sam remembers the sky lightening, that sick gray color hovering low, and then going blankly dark again. He drifted in and out of consciousness in the back of his brother's car. He had a broken left femur that Dean had splinted with rags and a snapped-in-half pool cue. There were track marks on Sam's arm from where Dean had shot him up with morphine while he was out. His head felt dented, smashed and rolled up in a narcotic haze.

Dean took him California, and Sam spent two weeks doped-up and sleeping on a stranger's floor while Dean and a few others built their little house on the surfless beach. Dean told him, "This is where we're gonna live," and so they have. Sam doesn't know what they were running from, what they've left behind. Dean has never said anything, and lately Sam's been wondering if he should ask.

In the afternoons Sam flings knives at the carved side of the house, assassinates bottles with one of the guns that Dean says is Sam's own. It doesn't feel solid or familiar in Sam's hand, though he is a pretty good shot. Dean has told him that they're hunters and heroes, and this is what they do, but Sam doesn't really know what he means when he says 'hunter,' only the murkiest idea about the concrete nature of a hero.

Dean says Sam's still good at this stuff because of muscle memory. Sam likes the sound of that, the thought that there might be secret memories stored in his body that have escaped the holocaust in his mind.

They come inside when the winds pick up and the light starts to go, and they kindle the fire in the stove, eat dinner out of tin cans. Dean has a jar of homebrew that he won't share and so Sam steals sips whenever his brother isn't looking. He's seen what it does to Dean, how it loosens him and puts a silly grin on his face. Sam's okay with that.

The burn in Sam's throat, down deep in his gut, makes a vision-like awareness sparkle at the edges of his perception. He's done this before, scrambled along the corners of a drunk before. His thoughts have woven and twisted hotly around his brother in the exact same way.

It's clear for a moment, and then gone. Sam is left staring at Dean's mouth, the shape of it soft and broken-in. There's a flush climbing onto Sam's face, forced up from the fire pit in his stomach, and he feels dizzy and confused. He has to look away from his brother, blink dumbly at the camp lantern glowing gold on the table.

"Goddamn I'm sick of beans," Dean remarks. He's lying on his back on the floor, his eyes closed and the mangled absence of his ear on the far side mostly hidden. "Everything that comes in a can, really."

Sam sneaks a glance at him, then away. He's very nervous for some reason, paranoid and edgy. Dean sighs loudly, hands folded on his stomach.

"Talking to one of those guys from the commune, said they got twice as many fields planted as we do, so at least if ours don't come through we can go begging up north. Actual food, man, I cannot fuckin' wait."

Sam tries to remember food that doesn't come in cans or vacuum-packed, and he gets flashes like glossy pages torn out of a magazine, omelets and hashbrowns, freshly-baked cakes and pies behind glass. He wonders if that stuff even exists anymore.

Dean sits up to drain the jar of homebrew, and Sam watches his throat move as he swallows. Dean gives him a sideways look.

"What?"

Shaking his head, Sam pulls his eyes down. Maybe he used to know how to handle these weird slingshotting feelings, but he doesn't now. Dean exhales, noisy and pointed.

"I need to go into town again tomorrow," Dean tells him. Sam tries to count backwards through the days, figure out how long it's been, but he gets mixed-up, his head not much for numbers right now. "You gonna want to come?"

"Yeah," Sam says without hesitation, and it catches them both very badly off-guard.

(break)

Dean studies Sam all through breakfast, not talking half as much as he usually does. Sam's not sure if Dean's leaving these spaces in the conversation for him to fill--he's not up to it, head fuzzy from a night of broken sleep. Sam doesn't want to talk unless he's sure he's saying the right thing.

He keeps his head down, his re-hydrated eggs tasting dustier than usual. Dean gets frustrated, clicking his back teeth together. There are probably a lot of signals and stuff that Sam is missing.

In the car, Dean asks bluntly, "Are you remembering stuff?"

Sam pauses, then shakes his head. He's pretty sure that's not it.

"But you're talking again." Sam shrugs, and Dean rolls his eyes. "Very sparingly, I know. Are you, like. Are you feeling better?"

Sam tries to remember what he felt like before. His leg hurt a lot more, especially after they ran out of painkillers. He was savagely tired in a constant way, worn down from being so confused all the time, everything such a trial. When Dean wasn't around all Sam could do was sit in his blue chair and read his books, blind eye turned to the quiet water.

"Yeah," Sam decides, and sees the corner of Dean's mouth flick upwards. Sam thinks of asking how long it's been, how many months they've lived out here, but he doesn't know what he'd do with that information, and so keeps quiet.

They pull into town and Sam gets out of the car when Dean does, earning him a narrow look over the top of the car. Sam's skin feels tight and tingly, hunching his shoulders against the wind. Dean mutters something that sounds like, "I swear," and leads them into the little store.

There's almost nothing on the shelves, a few cans of food that look like they've spent fifty years buried in a root cellar, one big basket half-full of hard candy, a colorful mess scavenged from dozens of sources. There is a long counter up front, a man in shirtsleeves smoking a handrolled cigarette seated behind it.

"Howdy, Dean," the man says. "Come about that fuel?"

"Say again?" Dean answers, tipping his good ear towards the man, coming up close to the counter.

The man repeated himself, added, "Still expectin' it from down south, sorry to tell ya."

Dean shrugs. "Ah, I still got half a tank. It'll last the week, at least."

He looks back at Sam, who's reading the candy wrappers, wondering what watermelon tastes like, and sour apple. Dean says his name and Sam comes to his side.

"This is my brother Sam. Sam, this is Eddie."

Sam smiles and nods. Eddie's eyebrows jump, looking from Dean to Sam and back again.

"Well, hell." Eddie sticks out his hand, wide-palmed dirty hand with the two smallest fingers missing. Sam flinches backwards, blinking fast. Eddie's hand hangs and then lowers uncertainly, and Dean clears his throat, puts his hand on Sam's shoulder.

"He's still gettin' over some stuff," Dean says, and then starts asking Eddie how the crops are looking and Sam wanders away from them. There's an uncomfortable tension in his shoulders, a prickle of sweat on the back of his neck. He wishes it were just him and Dean again.

The aisles display dust bunnies and small lost screws no longer than a thumbnail. Sam runs his fingers along the shelves, collecting pale gray dust. He comes around the corner and almost trips over the kid, same kid from before with the bleachy shirt and uncharitable eyes.

The kid scampers out from under foot, gives Sam a baleful glare.

"You again."

It sounds like an accusation, and Sam shrugs, eyeing the kid with suspicion.

The kid looks Sam up and down, mouth screwed up in a little knot. "You're not hurt."

Sam shakes his head, thinking that that's wrong. The kid misreads him, baring his teeth viciously and making Sam flinch again.

"If you're not hurt you oughta be on the Wall. You an' your brother, he never does _nothing_-"

and then a huge misshapen hand falls on the kid's shoulder, jerks him back. It's Eddie, a thunderous glower on his face. The kid barely comes up to his waist, squirming and fighting, fierce red blush on his face.

"You mind yourself," Eddie tells the kid sharply. "Pretend your daddy's standing right there and think what he'd want to hear out of you."

The kid stops squirming, spooked. "You gonna tell him?"

Eddie shakes his head but doesn't answer, shoving him towards the door. "Get outta my store, boy."

The kid winks away, disappearing in a flash but maybe that's just how kids move. Eddie looks at Sam, eyebrows down and a line pulled across his forehead. "Sorry 'bout that."

Sam shrugs, staring at the floor. He doesn't understand what just happened. He looks around for Dean and Dean is standing an aisle away, watching with an unreadable expression on his face. Sam's gaze meets his brother with a crack, and a breath catches short in Sam's throat.

"Right," Dean says low, and then affixes a grin that Sam can tell is fake even with all the holes in his brain. "Thanks Eddie. I'll see you soon."

Eddie nods, looking at Sam with something soft and hurtful that Sam recognizes belatedly as pity. It makes him want to spit on the floor of the store, a sudden shocking urge rising in him. He follows Dean out into the merciless sun, liking the way it scours the top layer off his consciousness.

Sitting in the car, Dean doesn't start her up. He stares forward, his face drawn in strict downward lines. Sam thinks that there must be stuff he's supposed to be saying right now.

All he can come up with is, "Dean."

Dean doesn't react for a second, then answers in a toneless voice, "I keep thinking it's better, you not remembering. Which is terrible, huh? And I'm sorry, but I can't help it."

Sam thumbs at the seam of his jeans, looking his fill of his brother. "I don't mind."

"You don't _know_."

"I know."

Dean cuts a hard look at him, all wounded eyes and guilty mouth. In the car Dean can't turn his head away, can't hide the place where his ear used to be, and it makes him self-conscious, never sure he's hearing right. They've been mangled in different ways, carrying vastly different scars. It must have been very bad.

"I can't," Dean says, hands fisted on the steering wheel, stuttering at the edges of words. "You, you lost all the bad stuff, and it's just so _much_, it's like our whole life, every fucking day but I still can't, can't wish it back on you. And it's still _you_. I don't know how you can lose everything and never talk and still be you, Sammy, but you. Somehow you are."

Sam's eyes are burning, shining maybe. He manages a shrug, one hand clenched and pressed hard into the side of his leg. He doesn't know where he'd be if he'd woken up not knowing the name being called, not recognizing Dean's panic-riddled face. Gone literally and directly out of his mind, is his only guess.

"It's so stupid," Dean says, almost muttering, scowling at the storefront baking in the sun. "I keep thinking it's gonna work out all right."

There's a fleck of white light on Dean's face from where the sun bounces off his silver ring, and Sam watches it slide slower than a tear down his brother's face. Sam doesn't say anything, but it's only because there is something thick lodged in his throat.

(break)

Sam can't sleep, jittering horrors lurking in the corners of his eyes, in the dark places. He's used to this, can't remember life before nightmares, and he doesn't dwell, gets up and takes the flashlight, pads barefoot to the kitchen. His leg is aching like it did before the skies cleared, and Sam thinks suddenly that it means rain is coming.

It gives him pause. He can't think of why old pain and the weather would be connected. It must be something he knew before.

Dean brought home tins of powdered cocoa, thinner than ash and puffing in the air, and Sam lights the stove, heats up some well water. He strains it through cloth to get the dirt and crap out of it, scoops out a mugful and dumps enough powder in to make it sludge. Sam eats it with his fingers, licking them clean, thinking small thoughts, little stuff about Dean and the overwhelming sweetness gritty between his teeth.

Dean's been spending his days out of the house more often lately. He comes home telling stories of the other people out here, the families of house-builders with their ridiculous picnic lunches, the mishmash groups tending the fields together, the guy scavenging and hoarding auto parts and motor oil to trade at absurd markup when people's cars start to die, and how Dean and some of the boys might have to go demonstrate the power of community to him in person.

Sam listens closely, barely recognizes the swaggering rake who stars in all of Dean's stories. He tips his eyebrow up and smirks to make Dean say, "Don't give me that look, Sam, that's really what happened."

Sam isn't really sure what exactly Dean _does_ when he's making his rounds to every sociable human in range. Other people, it would appear, have specific things with which they occupy their time. Dean just seems to keep an eye on it all, helping out where needed. Maybe that's a job too.

The one thing Sam hasn't heard Dean mention is the Wall that that kid kept talking about. He's not sure what to make of that omission, and so he tries not to think about it too much.

The chocolate sludge is gone. Sam rinses his hands with the extra water, swiping them through his hair to dry them, and then finds himself walking to Dean's room instead of his own. There's no door. Dean never made one.

He leans on the empty frame, studying his brother in the claustrophobic dark. Very small room, and Dean right there, sleeping on his stomach with his hand curled under the pillow, his bare back long and faintly curved. His spine is traced in a deeper shade of black, and Sam is having some trouble breathing.

He doesn't have names for all the things happening inside him just now. There is a persistent voice in his mind saying, _brother_, and Sam keeps thinking back at it, _yes i know so what so what_, and he gets nothing in response. He's looking at Dean's shoulders, the smooth perfect structure of them and he wants to put his mouth there, wants to learn the shape under his tongue. Sam shivers, clutching at the door jamb.

"Sam?"

Dean is awake. Sam thinks sharply, _sleep light, son, stay alive_, and it doesn't sound like his own voice. He shakes his head, gets rid of it.

Dean is squinting over his shoulder at Sam, his hair a nest of soft wrecked spikes and his eyes so heavily lidded they look closed. Sam goes over to him because he has to; it's pure instinct.

He climbs in his brother's bed and Dean makes a semi-annoyed questioning noise, shifting over to make room. Sam feels too hot, very aware of his arm against Dean's, their legs bumping. Dean gives him a narrow-eyed look.

"Nightmare?"

Sam shakes his head. He nudges a few millimeters closer to his brother. He's drawn, this slow-acting drag inside him. Dean freezes for a second, mouth opening slightly.

"What're you doing, then?" he asks in a whisper.

Sam's shoulders twitch, a minimal shrug because he doesn't trust his body right now, his skin too tight and too sensitive and his stomach all screwed up, nothing like he usually is. Dean looks away, licks his lips unconsciously and Sam's eyes stick on his mouth. They're so close to each other.

"Did you remember?" Dean asks. His voice catches, kinda snags. He's not looking at Sam.

"No," Sam says. He lays his fingers on Dean's cheek and kisses him on the mouth.

Dean jerks back but Sam just follows, and then Dean is sighing raggedly against his lips and sliding a hand into Sam's hair. Dean kisses him back twice as hard, filthy and deep and heat goes rocketing through Sam. He licks against Dean's tongue, fits the line of his body against his brother's.

Dean pulls away gasping. "_Sweet_," he says like a hiss. "Fuck, Sam, you just-" and then he kisses Sam again as if cutting himself off, hungry and desperate and without grace.

Sam is trying to press himself into Dean, not sure how these things are done. His hands are running like panic over Dean's chest and stomach and arms, all kinds of skin and it's so hot, so perfect that he can hardly believe it. Dean is arching up and groaning and it's doing crazy things to Sam. He buries his face in his brother's throat, his hand sliding up Dean's leg into his shorts. Dean squirms, panting hard with his hips begging at Sam and his eyes smudged black from desire, and Sam thinks that this is probably not actually their first time.

(break)

Sam is asleep, his arm slung around his brother. Really asleep for the first time in god knows how long--asleep and dreaming.

It was winter. It was the kind of eviscerating cold that the California coast has never known, twenty degrees below and people lying frozen blue and black in the huge drifts of snow. There were fireworks exploding overhead all joyous and colorful but that was only the dream. It had been bombs, Sam halfway thought in that unfinished manner of the subconscious.

Sam was crazy, lost and gone forever. He was going to end it all, left his brother chasing behind him and too late, still a day back at least, and it would be over. Dean would get here and whether or not Sam would be alive to meet him, it would be fucking _done_, at last. The world couldn't take any more of this war. There were greater tragedies than the body count, the empty night's sky and the oceans that never moved, and Sam had started it and he could end it, so he would. He had to.

And there were sheep and children and dogs in the road and Sam was running through them, heels skidding on ice. Hellhounds all around and it was an open feast, little kids so soft and slow, so red on the inside, dirty white tuffs of wool and anguished howls filling the air. Sam was stuck in glue, frozen in horror, and the ground split open, the ice cracking and the asphalt melting. From that great crack in the earth there was a gut-wrenching cry that stretched on and on, piercing so high Sam's ears started to bleed, and he was so scared, so unimaginably scared that his jackhammering heart wrenches him suddenly awake.

He snaps half-upright, one hand flat on his burning chest. He's gasping, almost hyperventilating, and Dean is awake, saying loud, "Sam, what," and his hand is on Sam's stomach, his leg over his brother's.

"It's okay, hey, you're all right," Dean says.

Sam nods jerkily, breathing in huge whoops with his eyes screwed shut. It takes him a minute to calm down and even when he does his head pounds, his lungs feeling wheezy. He looks at Dean apologetically, runs his hand down the side of Dean's face.

"It's okay," Dean says again. (He says that a lot.) "Jesus, man. They're pretty bad, huh?"

Sam lifts one shoulder, his eyes down. They are as bad as they've always been; it's nothing new. He rests his forehead on Dean's shoulder, gets the smell of him and the easy slide of Dean's arm around his back. It's important for him to just stay like that for a moment, half an embrace and everything Sam needs.

Then Sam rolls back to lie at Dean's side, looking away because he doesn't know if it's weird, all this stuff he wants from his brother. He doesn't even know if it's stuff he's already got.

They're quiet for a long while. Sam watches Dean with his eyes closed, breath coming too fast to be asleep. There's something akin to a smirk on Dean's face, more rueful than usual. It's not Sam he regrets; Sam is sure of that, at the very least.

"Hey," Dean says without opening his eyes. "How come you don't talk, Sam?"

It's asked with honest curiosity, nothing frustrated or hostile about it, and a tricky move on Dean's part that he keeps his eyes closed so that Sam will _have_ to talk to answer. Sam figures it's safe enough, anyway.

He lays his head down on his bent arm, shuts his own eyes because it's probably easier that way.

"I don't know anything."

Dean's leg twitches against Sam's. "You what, of course you do."

"No." Sam curls his hand around Dean's upper arm, appreciating the solid warm feel of the muscle.

"Dude, seriously, fuck that noise. You got some kinda psychic post-traumatic amnesia happening--you're not fuckin' _dumb_."

Sam's mouth curves, and he opens his eyes to find Dean regarding him earnestly, eyebrows up and mouth shaped in urgency. Sam remembers everything Dean has taught him about hunting and he thinks it's the ideal job considering this epically reckless love burning between them. Sam wants to save Dean's life on a daily basis. He wants the same from his brother; he knows they could pull it off.

"Not dumb," Sam agrees. "I just don't know anything."

That makes Dean pause for a second, some instinctive quip flashing across his face but evidently he judges the timing to be inapt, saying instead, "You think I fuckin' care if you ask an obvious question or say something stupid? Because you've been doing that your whole life, no need to get self-conscious now."

Sam nods, because he's sure that's true, just the nature of being the younger. And he knows that Dean wouldn't get mad at him or not answer or something. It's actually not about Dean, or not really. It's just that everything feels very solemn and significant, here at the end of the world, and Sam isn't ready to disturb it yet, not until he's sure of his place. He'd rather just observe for now.

He pushes his arm over Dean's chest, settles at his side. Dean exhales, slips his hand back into Sam's hair.

"I mean, whatever," Dean says. "I wasn't exactly keeping you around for your sparkling conversation in the first place."

Sam nods again, bumping his forehead on Dean's arm and feeling happy way down in his bones, all giddy and half-asleep. There are very few things of which he's certain, at this point in his life, but he's never had a doubt about his brother. He's been robbed of his mind and his past already, and they can take his arms, his legs, his eyes--just leave him Dean. Sam can get by with just Dean.

(break)

Dean leaves very early one morning, saying the windstorm the other night blew down the fences out on the grazing fields. He says it'll take all day to fix but it sounds like he's looking forward to it, eating breakfast standing up and talking to Sam still in bed. Sam's pretending to sleep but Dean knows him well enough not to buy it.

Then Dean's shouting, "Bye Sammy!" and letting the front door slam after him, and the Impala rumbles off and everything is silent again. Sam dozes, cloudy white near-dreams drifting through his mind.

He wakes back up when his stomach begins to make itself known, and fumbles through a cold breakfast, heating water to wash with, his neck grimy and his hair thickening from grease. Dean says nobody has any idea about the shelf life of soap, so Sam sniffs the new bar when he opens it up and it just smells fresh and green. It clears his head, and he shaves meticulously with a straight razor and no mirror.

Feeling pretty good in spite of everything, Sam finds himself itchy, not in the mood to stay inside or sit by the water reading. It's a sharp-edged day, constant blinding sun paired with fierce gusts of wind, and Sam goes out walking in it, following the long path down to the road.

It's quiet for miles around. Sam's footsteps scrape. The wind whistles, the few trees rustling like suspicious whispering voices. There is that persistent sense of things missing, gaps and spaces as empty as the road ahead, but Sam's gotten used to it.

He walks awhile, off the gray sand and onto the road, burned-out husks of houses to either side. He gauges distance by the gradual increase of pain in his leg, the steel claw sinking into his hip. His mind runs feverishly with pictures of his brother, all breathless and pleading, stripped to skin and sweat. Dean on his elbows and knees, craning his head into Sam's hand and making his back roll like the sea should. Dean groaning and chewing on the sheets, begging indistinct and broken and wild. Sam's hands all over his back, no friction at all, just slick and smooth, so hot he couldn't touch one spot for too long.

Sam is distracted, doesn't hear the car until it's closing the last few hundred feet. He looks back, startled and tensing immediately, shading his eyes against the sun to see a cloud of dust approaching, briefly obscuring quick flashes of dingy metal that resolve into a muddy-green pick-up truck with one busted headlight.

The pick-up slows as it comes up behind, and Sam stops, badly nervous because he hasn't seen anybody other than Dean for a couple weeks now. He wonders if he should have taken one of the guns, if Dean is going to freak out when he hears Sam went out walking alone.

The man driving is of indeterminate age somewhere between thirty and sixty, graying beard that might just be dust, glittering bright eyes set in a hard-worn face, and he leans across the seat to get a look at Sam, the shotgun side window rolled down.

"Who the hell are you?" the man asks.

Sam swallows hard. "Sam Winchester."

The man's eyes get big, and Sam doesn't know why that keeps happening when he tells people his name.

"Dean's brother? Shit, I owe Chen two bottles of brew."

Sam doesn't say anything. He keeps his shoulders pulled up straight, his face blank. If this guy knows Dean he's probably okay, so it must be some kind of hunter's instinct keeping him from relaxing.

"Way Dean talks, I woulda expected you to be about nine feet tall," the man says, scratching at his ratty beard. Sam shrugs, not sure how to respond. "Anyway, where you headed?"

Sam wasn't really going anywhere in particular, but that sunny-day itch is still crawling under his skin, a fast glean of crazy possibilities, and he hears himself saying, "The Wall."

"Hell, it's your lucky day, I go on shift at noon. Hop in."

Sam obeys, a jumping feeling in his stomach. The truck is different from Dean's car in every way, the seat stiff and awkward at Sam's back, his legs too long and wedged against the dash. Sam doesn't mind, more interested in the low-key adrenaline rush racing through him. He's going somewhere strange just because he's never been. He likes the feeling, wonders if this is the kind of thing he used to do all the time.

The man ("Christopher Philip Vandermere, but everyone calls me Top") asks Sam if Dean's story about Brooklyn is true. Sam doesn't know, but he figures Dean probably wasn't lying, so he says yes. He mouths _Brooklyn_ to himself, feeling out the brittle shape and trying to remember what it means.

Top shakes his head, vaguely awestruck look on his face. "I watched New York burn, you know. We were on one of the last planes out, saw the whole thing start to come down. Awful thing, just awful. It's goddamn good to hear you made 'em bleed for it, at least."

Sam stares out the windshield, his face flushed because he doesn't know what to say; he doesn't know what Top's talking about, this good thing he's supposed to have done in some long-ago place.

There's a moment that passes and Sam suspects he was supposed to say something to fill it. The air between them changes slightly, and then Top says:

"Don't say much, do ya?" and he doesn't sound angry or anything, just kinda mildly resigned, as if he meets people like Sam all the time.

Sam picks through his brain, and settles on quoting his brother. "I'm still getting over some stuff."

Top makes a sound close to a laugh. "Ain't we all."

Then he lets the silence have it. Sam watches the dried-clay land flying past, spotting the cluster of buildings where the store is and thinking that this is as far away from home as he has ever been.

It takes them better than an hour to get to the Wall. Sam sees it like a monumental cliff face, a mythic colorless mass rising sheer from the earth. There's a sinking feeling in his stomach, and he thinks it's called dread.

There are a half-dozen cars parked in a dirt lot, and a small wooden room hammered together at the base of the Wall, a few men with heavy beards standing around squinting in the sunlight.

Sam hangs back behind Top as they get out of the truck, eyes scanning around trying to take in everything. His heart is beating very fast for some reason.

The Wall is made of rusty cars and huge chunks of concrete, rubble from torn-up highways and old buildings, piled so high he has to tilt his head back. There are tall wooden cross-braces built along the side to keep it all held together, ladders nailed in place and leading up to the top, where Sam can just make out men with rifles on their shoulders gathered loosely together.

Top hails the men on the ground and gets slapped on the back for his trouble. Sam lingers outside their little circle, his fingers itchy and his face hot and he thinks this whole thing must be a bad idea.

"Who's your friend, Top?" one of the guys asks.

Top looks over his shoulder, grabs Sam and pulls him forward. "Sam Winchester, if you can fuckin' believe that."

Sam tries to hide in his shoulders, darting his eyes at the men in snatches that feel almost guilty, distinguishing them by their scars. The men look uniformly surprised, but in that big-eyed awed way that Sam is learning to hate. He doesn't know why anybody would look at him like that--what could he ever have been that could justify it?

"He doesn't look anything like Dean," comments the one who has one more sleeve than he needs, the empty bit cut short and pinned up. It breaks the tension, the others guffawing and rolling their eyes.

There's a man with an eyepatch breaking up a vicious silver scar that runs forehead to mid-cheek, and he steps forward, offers his hand to Sam. "Jake Reynosa. It's a fuckin' honor, man."

Sam looks at his extended hand, still uncomfortable like when Eddie tried it, but he puts his hand to the other man's, limp-wristed and unsure. He doesn't like touching people who aren't Dean, Sam decides. He doesn't know why people need to squeeze hands anyway.

He steps back, eyes on the dirt, and there's a silence that hangs heavy and awful and Sam knows he should have said something. He hears Top clear his throat.

"Sam's kinda gun-shy," Top says. "Since he and his brother came from back east, you know what I mean?"

There's a low-voiced rumble of assent. Everyone else seems to know what Top means. Someone claps Sam on the arm and he does his very best not to flinch away.

They turn to other things, talk of rifles and idle gossip, and Sam looks up to the top of the Wall again, swallowing past something thick in his throat. The men up there are on the ladders now, making their way down the braces with their weapons swinging on their backs. Sunlight spears off the broken glass and metal in the Wall and glares so bright the men disappear for whole seconds at a time.

Top nudges Sam to get his attention, and Sam's eyes fall down to him.

"So you want to come up and take a shift with us? We're actually short a man, it'd work out neat."

Sam thinks he might be terrified, standing at the base of this monstrous thing and his brain is working at long last, asking him over and over again, _what's on the other side_, until it runs through him like a song.

"Yeah," Sam says, and Top grins with browning teeth.

"Attaboy. C'mon, let's get you a gun."

He starts leading Sam over to the little room, but then there's a familiar growling sound filling the air, the smell of rising dust suddenly sharp, and Sam turns to see the Impala pulling up in the lot. Dean is behind the wheel and Sam feels his heart tangibly jolt in his chest.

Dean gets out and he's staring at Sam like they haven't seen each other in years. Sam smiles without really thinking about it.

"What're you doing here?" Dean says, ignoring the rough chorus of greetings from the other men and bee-lining to Sam's side.

Sam shrugs, eyes lidded and locked on Dean, looking his fill. Dean scowls back at him.

"How the fuck did you even get here?"

"Ah, that'd be me," Top contributes. "Picked him up just down the road from your place."

"You were _hitchhiking_?" Dean asks in disbelief. Sam shakes his head, only seventy-five percent sure he knows what that word means; it was in the title of one of the space alien books Dean brought him.

"Nah, he's just taggin' along," Top says, and Sam isn't sure why the older man is sticking up for him, but he's willing to go with it. "Gonna help us out on shift today since Delontae broke his leg."

"That's why I'm here," Dean says, distracted with his eyebrows pinching down. "You were going up on the Wall, Sam?"

Sam shrugs again, sticks his hands in his pockets. He doesn't know what he's going to do. He's not scared anymore because Dean is here, and without being scared it seems kinda insane to climb that thing, nothing but ladder rungs between him and the drop.

Dean is studying him and he must see something, it must be clear to people with the right kind of memories, because he says to Top, "Listen, man, maybe we're actually gonna take a powder on this one."

He wraps his hand around Sam's arm, subtly tugging him back. Top's face registers confusion, but nowhere near as bad as Sam feels, and he nods slowly, lifting one shoulder.

"Sure, whatever you guys want. We'll be all right."

Dean smiles close-lipped and Sam is almost certain it's fake. "'preciate it, Topper. I'll see you back at the fields."

He takes Sam back to the Impala, and Sam wonders if Dean's upset or something. He can't really tell, Dean's jaw taut and his eyebrows broken downwards.

Dean gets them on the road, speeding up as if something were chasing. Sam watches the Wall shrinking in the rearview, feeling a disquieting tug in the stomach.

It's a little while before Dean says, "You should stay away from there."

Sam turns that over in his head until he feels okay asking, "Why?"

Cutting a skittish glance at his brother, Dean's hand tightens on the wheel as he answers, "Because."

Sam doesn't say anything. He accepts it, looks out his window at the remains of the torched houses all charred black and jagged-looking. Dean exhales loudly, sounding upset.

"Jesus, Sam, don't take that for an answer."

Sam looks back at him, eyebrows up. Dean is glowering at the road, strangling the steering wheel. His throat moves fast as he swallows. Something about the way he's staring strictly ahead makes Sam know he wants to look over but isn't allowing himself.

"It's just, I don't want you to, to. It's not that I don't think you _can_. But it's the bad stuff again, it's the fucking, like, the worst kinda stuff. And you don't need that right now."

Nodding, rubbing his thumb on the edge of the seat, Sam thinks for a long moment about what he should say, if he should say anything at all. His head is starting to ache, a thrum starting way down deep, and he wishes Dean would look at him. Most things seem better when Dean is looking at him.

Sam asks his brother, "What happened, Dean?"

And then he holds his breath.

Dean doesn't say anything for a long moment. His face is set and still, and he looks too old, his mutilated ear like something half-decayed. He looks terribly sad, and he tells Sam without any inflection:

"There was a war."

He stops there, glances at Sam with naked pleading in his eyes and so Sam doesn't ask him anything else. It's been such an odd day. Sam doesn't really understand much of it, but Dean thinks that's a good thing and Sam figures he's probably right.

(break)

Sam jolts out of a nightmare, eyes snapping open and a gasp barely caught back from his lips. Sam holds perfectly still, checks to see that Dean's not awake, that they're not touching, before easing out of bed. He rubs his hands on his face, bare feet on the cold floor. Picking up his shorts and shirt, Sam leaves the room to dress in the hallway. He doesn't look back at Dean because it kills him to watch Dean sleep, something caught between envy and delirious adoration.

He left his book on the kitchen table, and he takes it into the main room, sets up on the couch with a flashlight and a blanket. It's all routine at this point. He keeps his mind fuzzed and crammed with static to hold off remembering the nightmare, and then reading always helps. Sam has learned, the first fifteen minutes after waking up are always the most crucial in terms of long-term damage.

Sam is almost done with his book. It's not aliens anymore, Dean found him this giant book about hobbits and elves and dwarves and such, and Sam has been a little obsessed with it recently. Dean's been out of the house a lot and Sam hardly ever sleeps; he always has a lot of time to kill.

The book is mostly about a war. Sam reads about the armies of the West camped on a desolate field, reads, 'the waxing moon was four nights old, there were smokes and fumes that rose out of the earth and the white crescent was shrouded in the mists of Mordor.'

Sam looks up, eyes going immediately to the window and the patch of black sky visible. He blinks, not sure what he's looking for. There's an uneasy swing in his stomach, that not-right feeling that has faded so much suddenly rearing up in him again. The book is too heavy, its pages water-swollen and dried to a crisp.

He gets up, goes outside and down the short path to the beach. His face is turned up, eyes raking across the stars. It feels like a puzzle, like there's something he's not seeing. Sam lies down on the sand, the book a massive thing resting on his stomach.

It's so quiet out here. Even the wind is gone. There are faraway bug noises and that's all. In the corner of Sam's eye the ocean stretches out black and without end, smooth as glass.

Sam isn't thinking about anything in particular. He's trying to figure out why he's so bothered by the night sky, and he's remembering sucking Dean off earlier, and he's thinking about the book, the armies amassing on blackened plains and smoke-filled earth. He wonders what his war was like, but then he stops because that brings him back to his nightmares and that's what he's out here chasing away in the first place.

Dean calls him from the house, eerie and echoing, "Sam?"

"Yeah," Sam says, but it's a whisper. He coughs, calls out, "Yeah Dean."

No sound of footsteps, and Dean shows up barefoot, jeans thrown on and nothing else. Sam smiles up at him, air gone from his lungs because Dean looks so good like that.

"What's going on?" Dean asks, yawning in the middle of it. He rubs his eye with his fist, face scrunched down in a boyish scowl.

"Nothing."

"You sleeping out here? 'cause that's a little weird."

Sam shakes his head. Sand grits into his hair, his fingers half-buried and he wonders which there's more of, stars or grains of sand.

Dean sits down cross-legged next to Sam. He looks worriedly out at the sea, and then turns his eyes to the sky, the long line of his neck showing. Sam just wants to touch him all the time, never do anything else.

"Jesus," Dean says after a minute. "It's fuckin' spooky quiet out here."

Sam nods. He puts his hand on Dean's knee, rubs his fingers against the seam. Sam says, "Dean," mostly to himself, and Dean brushes absently at the sand in Sam's hair.

They don't say anything else for awhile, occupying the same small space and breathing unconsciously in time. Dean has a calming effect on Sam, makes him forget about how lost and incomplete he is. If Dean's around, he instantly becomes the only thing Sam can think about.

Then Dean asks without looking down at him, "Do you miss it too?"

He sounds heartbreakingly young, and Sam tightens his hand on his brother's knee.

"What?"

"The moon." Dean's throat swallows. "The goddamn moon."

Sam jerks, a shocky heat running swiftly through him. He widens his eyes at the sky, a breath caught in his throat, and it feels like a hole has been punched in his brain.

Dean is looking down at him, vaguely appalled. "Fuck, Sam, I thought--you don't remember it?"

Sam sits up, sand skating under his collar to itch down his back. He's shaken, clutching Dean's knee and begging at him silently with his eyes. There is an image trying to coalesce in his mind, a mash-up of descriptions from the hobbit book and the alien books and whatever tattered subterranean memories he still has.

"It's," Sam says, and then pauses, says almost wonderingly, "There are moons in all my books. But you said those books weren't about real stuff."

Dean shakes his head, his eyes cast down and making him look almost guilt-stricken. His eyebrows are drawn together, his mouth small. Sam hates that look on his brother's face, like Dean is certain he's done something wrong.

"It's okay," Sam says. It hangs uselessly between them.

Dean shakes his head some more, runs a hand through his hair and then looks out at the ocean, his face tightening. Sam wants to touch him, put his hand on Dean's knee again, something. He thinks about how there's nothing but the two of them for miles.

"I don't want you to. To know what the rest of us have to know," Dean says haltingly. "I'd forget, if I could. Everybody would."

Sam nods his head, but he feels kinda sick. He doesn't think Dean really gets what life is like for him.

"Well," Dean says, a wrenched defeated note in his voice and Sam can honest to god feel a crack open in his heart. "We used to have a moon. Right over there."

He lifts one arm, pointing at nothing in particular in the sky. Sam shifts closer to Dean, puts his arm around his brother's shoulders as they fall. Dean releases a pent breath, sags to fit against the line of Sam's body. He's shaking so slightly that Sam wouldn't know otherwise, the gentlest tremble running under Dean's skin.

"Nobody knows how they did it," Dean tells him, sounding trance-like, deadened. "It waned and waned and then it was gone, just gone from one night to the next. The tide went out and never came back, and then the oceans changed. This place, where we are now? This was a mile out to sea. We, we should be drowning right now."

Dean presses his fisted hands against his face, bowing his shoulders. Sam slides his arm down Dean's warm chest, hugs his brother to him. Dean shrugs him back, half-turning away. Sam rolls his head on the back of Dean's, making near-silent hushing sounds into the nape of his neck.

"It's just hard to take," Dean whispers, and Sam nods like he knows what his brother is talking about. "Hard to think that this is how the world is now."

There's an obstruction in Sam's throat and he can't swallow or breathe or speak just yet. He looks out at the ocean's pristine surface mirroring the stars, and his stomach hurts just looking at it. He thinks about how he's always known it was wrong, always felt worse in the middle of the night.

"Dean," he says in a torn voice, tightening his arm around his brother again. "That war you told me about. Did we win?"

And Dean doesn't say anything for the longest time. His bare shoulders are taut, his back stiff, and Sam thinks that Dean probably wants to be let go, but he can't, not yet. He feels pinned to his brother, sewn, like they share the same set of lungs. Sam is holding his breath, anyway. For some reason he has his fingers crossed.

"We didn't lose," Dean says finally. "We gave up too much, but we're still here."

Then he ducks his head, mouth twisting like he's embarrassed. He slips out from under Sam's arm and gets to his feet. Sand falls off him in a thin shower, and Dean is standing outlined against the ocean, a stark figure on a field of black. He stares out at the water, back to his brother and Sam wishes with everything in him that he could see Dean's face at this moment.

Dean says, "This is the end of the world, Sammy, you know that?"

Sam pushes to his feet, comes to stand next to his brother. He glances at Dean and he can't help himself, a curling hot thing happening in his chest, a steady hum running all through him. Sam doesn't care about the stuff he can't remember. He doesn't care what's on the other side of the Wall.

"It's home, Dean," Sam tells him.

Dean kinda huffs, shaking his head and kicking at the sand, but Sam just puts his arm around Dean's shoulders again, grinning out at nothing.

Finally, finally Sam knows where he is.

THE END

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